Zapruder Point

It’s taking me far longer to get through The Lay of the Land than the other two Frank Bascombe books, but passages like this keep me going: “A lot of life is just plain wrong. And the older I get, the more clearly and often wrong it seems. And all you can do about it [...]

While visiting my folks this past weekend, I snagged the 20″ iMac that my step-dad had, to his dismay, found no use for after buying it sometime in 2007. I got it for a beyond-fair price, and the Megabus, despite other shortcomings I won’t get into here, did allow me to load the big white [...]

Beginning with the sinking feeling balancing out the gee-whizzery that came with my first iPod, and culminating with Nick Southall’s excellent Stylus piece from 2006, I’ve always looked down on compression. Whenever I make mix CDs, I try to use uncompressed files whenever I have them, and I make note of the fact on the [...]

Weekend before last, after Scott and I were done recording his Monologue Bombs demos, we captured our acoustic take on Jackson Browne’s “Somebody’s Baby.” Scott thinks I’m obsessed with that song, but it really does suit our vocal blend well, especially after we dropped the key down a step. Scott also indulged me by accomppanying [...]

Scott’s visit continued to be a whirlwind. We recorded the basic tracks for 7 songs on Wednesday. He didn’t realize that with my set-up I can only record one mike at a time, and he didn’t feel comfortable doing separate vocal tracks for at least a couple of the songs. Fidelity was compromised as a [...]